Deus Ex™ GOTY Edition

I played it all the way through when it first came out and loved. A great blend of RPG, shooter, story and strong characters. It's harder now than I remembered, but stick at it, build your JC and it comes together. It's a linear openworld game, in that it is linear, but gives you multiple ways to get through the missions and feels open. Half Life 2 pulled that off too, as did, many years later, Cyberpunk 2077, which seems a direct descendant to me. I had to use the Revision Mod, but GOG makes that easy. The game runs without it, but doesn't save or with Kentie's Launcher it will save, but won't change weapons. Revision though just works - it does make some changes to the game, but not too much I think. One of the all time greats.

Clearly this is my all-time favourite game. Probably the title I did the most playthroughs on over the years, stopped counting at 7. Loved the the story, the choices, music, characters, locations, gameplay, and the replayability. Only thing that did not age quite as well as the rest is the graphics, but you still can find some visual mods online to make it shine again. Wayyy better than Deus Ex Invisible War, and in some respects even beats 2011's Human Revolution, too.

Still my favourite from the franchise. Graphics may be outdated, but if you are into old-school gaming you won't care anyway. Everything else is just great and there are some awesome free Total Conversions as well to download from the net. I do still have more fun with this game than with many of the current game releases. The gameplay can be what you like: Pure action, thrilling stealth or just using your brain and conversation skills. You should be into dark sci-fi settings though.

I've decided to play DE since Human Revolution impressed me so much and wanted to complete the first two parts to complete the story before playing Mankind Divided, so this review reflects the point of view of a guy that played the game for the first time in 2018 after completing HR. The graphics are still acceptable and are not painful to look at which is often the case with old 3D games, which is impressive given it's been 20 years. The story is intiriguing, though naive at many points, which will disappoint you if you expect something comparably complex to HR. I had also expected more open world and side quests. There are still some deep and immersive dialogs that really make you think about the future world that were the high points of HR. The combat system is cool and character development seems to be thought-through, but the tasks are lengthy and get boring after a while. I had the feeling that the game is simply too long and repetitive - kill the guy, get the item. I've played the stealth way, which has probably took much more time than hacking through the enemies, but didn't feel being rewarded too much for that, except for being able to overhear a couple of additional dialogs that didn't add much to the story. Probably it used to be more fun at the time it was released as the game was revolutionary in terms of graphics, story and openness. Despite losing its edge a little with time, the game is still enjoyable today and I recommend it to people that enjoyed the sequels as well as to all those that like dark sci-fi and fusion of RPG and action. It's also fairly easy (didn't spend most of my skill points until the last missions).

Theres a reason this game is so widely acclaimed. I've played it through maybe 3x, first getting it back in 2001. The depth of the writing in the game with discoverable books and dialogue is top notch. Some occasionally unintentionally hilarious voice acting too. Great music. This game has great layers of cyber-punk, govt conspiracies, shadow conspiracies, bioengineering etc. They allow for different approaches to the same problem with some levels almost feeling open world as you explore the surroundings and try to discover how to accomplish your objectives. Cons might be clunky fighting FPS, but thats secondary to why the game shines. I still found it to be enjoyable to get into firefights. You can be strategic with gas grenades, LAMs, pepperspray, dragon's tooth... Brb gonna go play it again.